


second eyes

by insert_cliche



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:28:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 3,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28967601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insert_cliche/pseuds/insert_cliche
Summary: In another life, Tenten is given the Byakugan. Nobody is happy about this.
Relationships: Hyuuga Neji/Tenten
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	1. lee

**Author's Note:**

> drafted 2013, cleaned and posted 2021.

Their pursuers fall on them as the twilight is darkening into night. Lee has long ago come to terms with his weaknesses, but speed is not one of them, and he neutralizes the first shinobi that edges too close to their camp before he can signal for support.

It isn’t enough. There are far too many of them--whoever wanted the information they were holding was willing to pay extravagantly, or must have had something equally valuable to trade. A horde of enemies descends on them, and there is nothing else to do but fall into the rhythm of combat. Kunai whip through the air around him. He hears bodies flying away from hard palm strikes. He punches, kicks, knocks enemies out, but the three of them are outnumbered.

Tenten goes down with a cry and Lee nearly turns to run back to her before he sees Neji throw his opponent away with a _kaiten_ and run to her. The distraction costs him--a sharp pain slices across his leg and he snaps back to find his attacker jumping away with a bloody sword. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Neji kneeling over Tenten’s prone body, making hand signs for a jutsu Lee’s never seen before. They are both defenseless, and Lee sharpens his resolve and throws everything he has at their attackers. 

After the first wave is dead, before the reinforcements show themselves, Neji stands. “She’ll live, but only if we lead them away,” he says gravely.

“Will she make it back to Konoha?”

Neji nods. “I’ve done what I can.”

Neji’s eyes are dark, deep brown where Lee has only ever seen cool grey. _This will be Neji’s first fight without his power_ , Lee realizes, _and his last_. Neji picks up on his silence, and nods. 

Lee’s throat closes, his grief building up in a slow wave. The two of them have always known that given any chance, their last breaths will be spent making sure that Tenten will walk away alive. But this, the physical manifestation of Neji’s devotion to her life, is worse than anything he’s had to see before. If only they had time-

“Neji-”

“Lee. I have been honored to be your teammate.”

And then there is no more time for words. They turn towards the enemies approaching nearby, and Lee reaches inside himself for the strength for his last attack. He releases the gates and lets the flames consume him.


	2. izumo and kotetsu

Izumo and Kotetsu are the first to see her from their post at the village gate. 

“Tenten, registration 012573,” she gasps. “Mission compromised. Team members Rock Lee, 012561, and Hyuuga Neji, 012587, killed in action.”

Kotetsu is unable to stop the choked sound that forces its way out of his throat. Team Gai is Konoha’s only active all-jounin team and has a stellar mission history. It is balanced in short- and long-range combat, and is often sent into A- and S-class missions, the kind with restrictions and impossible odds. 

Team Gai, Konoha’s only all-jounin team and its most proficient close-combat group, has been defeated. It is unthinkable, yet it has already happened.

Izumo recovers quicker than his partner, and takes over the report. No matter the losses, all ninja know the post-mission protocol by heart.

“Where was the mission compromised?”

“Two days ago, at the east border of Sound.”

“How many hostiles?”

“Over twenty, jounin or higher. Two hunter-nin or former ANBU.”

It is a miracle that even one of the three survived, Kotetsu thinks. Veteran jounin would be hard-pressed to survive such odds. 

“Bodies?” 

“Recovered.” 

She hands two thin scrolls to Izumo, who accepts them with a quiet sigh. If bodies cannot be sealed, they are burned, but the storage seal is genin’s play for someone whose signature dragons lay in scrolls. There will be two more names on the memorial stone come morning.

“Noted. The Byakugan?”

Tenten closes her eyes. They are swollen red and rimmed with blood. “I can confirm that it is no longer in his body.”

Izumo nods. “We will need proof.”

“I will submit to T&I debrief.”

“Noted. Anything else?”

“I need to see Tsunade,” she says.


	3. tsunade

As Hokage and Konoha’s best healer, Tsunade is privy to all of the bloodline clan secrets. She knows how the Aburame infuse kikaichu into their infants, the exact formula for the Akimichi Three Coloured Pills, and most importantly, the activation sequence for the Byakugan.

She has never in all her years thought that she would ever need to teach that sequence. 

“Tenten, make these seals for me.” Tsunade demonstrates the sequence-- _ horse-tiger-boar-hare-rat _ \--and Tenten copies them flawlessly. Tsunade can feel the chakra building up in the space behind Tenten’s eyes.

“Release it.”

Tenten had returned with a pale film covering her brown eyes, and Tsunade had worried about blindness until Tenten had told her what had happened. Under Tsunade’s watch, her eyes pale further, turning into a mild grey. The veins near her temple grow more pronounced.

It is, undoubtedly, the Byakugan. In his last moments, Neji performed one of the only known cases of live Byakugan transfer. 

“It’s his,” Tsunade says, raising her hand to Tenten’s eyes where the chakra is pulsing. “It looks as healthy as can be, under these circumstances. I’ve never seen an eye transfer like this.”

“I thought so,” Tenten replies. “When I turned his body over, his eyes were too dark, and when I ran home, my eyes hurt in a way I’ve never hurt before. And at the end, he made seals over me and said...”

She trails off, unwilling to say anything else. Tsunade doesn’t push. The truth will come out soon--the clan elders will settle for nothing less than all the answers.

Tenten begins to cry.


	4. ino

Ino stares at Tenten from across the table. Despite the countless interrogations that have been carried out in the T&I chamber, the table is still smooth and glossy with polish. The chuunin interns obviously haven’t been getting enough real work to do, then, if all the senior interrogators can come up for them to do is housekeeping. Ino has some suggestions.

“I’ll have to look through all your recent memories,” Ino says. “I’ll try not to pry too much.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Ino, I know the protocols.”

Ino doesn’t break her stare. She raises her hands-

* * *

_ She is on the ground, staring at the stars. It was the last one who got the drop on her, taking advantage of Tenten recalling a weapon to attach his own seal and knock her out. There are senbon embedded in her bicep, burning; if the poison is what she thinks it is, she has mere minutes left before she loses all feeling in her upper arm. The wind and heat of another gate release buffet her side. _

_ Something clatters by her ear, and she closes her eyes and braces herself for death. Grits her teeth and hopes for a quick one. When the person by her side doesn’t move, she opens her eyes again.  _

Neji. 

What are you doing? _She tries to speak, but the words come out too slowly. As she struggles against her paralysis, he dips a finger into the blood running out of the wound on his chest and brings it to her face._

_ “Take this,” he says as he brushes blood onto her face. “It will protect you.” _

_ Her muscles are screaming. Every ounce of her is trying to force her arms up, lift her head, see him, but she is frozen. He is making hand signs now, a sequence she never saw him practice in all their years training together. _

_ His hand covers her eyes, and everything goes dark. _

* * *

Ino’s eyes are haunted as she returns to her own body. Before she can speak, Tenten interrupts.

“I never remembered what he said until now. Thank you.”


	5. hiashi

Three days after a genin messenger brought Hiashi news of his nephew's death, an attendant announces that there is a visitor here to see him. 

"She refuses to speak to anyone else, sir.”

"Who is it?"

"Neji's former teammate, Tenten. She was the only one to survive the mission."

"Bring her in."

She steps in silently, and comes to stand in front of Hisashi. Her eyes are covered by a linen bandage.

“Why have you come here?” 

“I’m so sorry, Hyuuga-sama. I never asked for him to do this.”

She unwraps the bandage and opens her eyes. Where there was once brown, there is now steel grey. 

His nephew’s eyes stare back at him.

* * *

“The day before he died,” she says, “I saw him reading a scroll we stole from Mist. It was written by a hunter-nin by the name of Ao, the only man to have successfully stolen a Byakugan.” 

“That was not your mission.”

She nods. “I’m not sure how he came by the information. Now I’m not sure if our attackers were after our original mission scrolls, or the research.”

“And where are these scrolls now?”

“Gone. I couldn’t find them on his body when I woke…”

_What use are you_ , Hiashi wants to yell. _Neji gave everything as a sacrifice, and you didn’t even grant him the dignity of carrying out his final mission?_

She flinches and bows her head, as if she had heard his thoughts. 

“I’ll accept death, if that is what your clan wants. I know I should have been the one to die for him. I’d do anything for him to be alive instead.”

* * *

The clan deliberates for a week. In the end, they choose mercy and begin to build a gilded cage.


	6. hinata

Hinata is about to leave for a training session with Kiba and Shino when she comes across Tenten standing in the middle of an open practice garden, on her knees and breathing heavily. There are no weapons in sight.

Tenten has lost weight; her shirt hangs loose on her shoulders and Hinata can see the shadow of her collarbone, as sharp as a new kunai. Her eyes are dull, covered with a film that Hinata knows is the only physical representation of the Byakugan Neji gave her, but instead of being pale white, her eyes are tinged with grey. Most villagers think that she came back blinded; the shinobi know better. Her hair is bound with a single tie at the base of her neck, the rest of it hanging long and loose. Hyuuga-style.

Hinata takes Tenten’s hand in both of her own, and brushes her fingertips over scarred knuckles and paper thin skin. Tenten’s bones feel thin and brittle, like dried branches after a hard winter. She activates her Byakugan wordlessly, falling into the world of hazy blue and grey. 

Tenten’s chakra is built up behind her tenketsu points. Not only that, it moves sluggish in her body.

“Tenten, have you been eating?”

Tenten laughs bitterly. “I eat. I try to avoid the main hall. Your family hates me too much.” Hinata closes her eyes, unable to come up with comforting words that would gentle the sting of truth. Tenten picks at the fraying edge of her shirt, red threads falling onto the ground like sakura petals.

“Do you sleep, too? You look exhausted”

“How can I, Hinata? He haunts me in my dreams and he haunts me when I’m awake, and every time I use the Byakugan I can feel his chakra, as if he’s looking through my eyes. And no matter where I am, I feel your family’s eyes on me. I was never meant to have a bloodline. I was supposed to be expendable. I was supposed to die for him.”

Tenten is shaking now. Hinata folds her into a hug, and they share their grief in silence.


	7. genma

Genma is taking a well-deserved break after his spar with Ebisu when he feels a familiar chakra signature approach the edge of the training ground. He glances at Ebisu, who nods and makes himself scarce.

Tenten steps into the clearing, her eyes surveying the area like prey walking into unknown territory. He would never dream of stealing glory from Gai, but Genma considers Tenten his own personal apprentice in the art of senbon combat, and cares about her as if she were of his own blood. Shinobi make their own family, after all. He heard through the jounin grapevine about what happened on that doomed mission, how the team rumored to become the next great ANBU unit lost two of its members in combat with well-informed rogue nins. However, Gai himself had told Genma about Tenten’s return, devastated, tearless, with grey eyes. 

She is obviously unwell. And yet here she is, making an attempt at normalcy. He hates the way ninja push themselves further into pain when they try to get away from sorrow.  


“Tenten,” Genma says. “How are you?”

She turns to him, and he is distinctly reminded of his former Hyuuga classmate’s stare.

“I’m sure you've heard by now.”

Genma will not deny it. “Gai told me the day after your return. He mentioned that you needed help that he could not provide.”

She nods. “I need to learn the limits of my new...ability.”

A Hyuuga secret she already knows intimately: there is always a blind spot. She must find hers.


	8. sakura

Tenten is usually very good about picking up her medication every two weeks. When the jounin doesn’t show up for her appointment, Sakura is more than a little bit curious. Tenten is her last appointment of the day, so Sakura packs up early and waves goodbye to a disgruntled Shizune, slipping the small pill bottles into her satchel so she can deliver them to the jonin. 

Sakura finds Tenten leaning on the memorial stone with a pile of kunai by her side and a sharpening stone in hand. Her voice is muted by the rustling leaves, but Sakura can hear Tenten speaking quietly.

“...and she finally acknowledged me. Who would’ve believed that Hanabi would take longer to come around than Hisashi-sama?” She laughs and sets a newly-sharpened kunai down. “Sometimes I still wish you were the one who came back alive, if only so that she could be a little less spiteful. I think she misses you.”

“I’ve offered as much as I can, but I know I'll never be enough. The best I can do is to use your gift to keep your loved ones safe, the way you did.”

“I’m not happy with your choice, Neji. It was selfish to only think of what you wanted to save. But if I had been in your place, if either Lee or you were ever in danger like that, I would have made the same one. I guess I’m just mad that I had to be the one left behind.”

“I miss you.”

“Thank you”


	9. neji

The mission is compromised. The odds that all of them will live is infinitesimal.  This is why he reaches inside, remembering the forbidden scrolls he stole for the clan, and wills himself to remember the transfer.

He thinks about the consequences. The Hyuuga clan will be in an uproar when a shinobi with no bloodline to speak of walks into their halls in possession of the clan’s prize. If given the choice between an expendable kunoichi like herself and the clan prodigy, branch member though he is, the clan would choose him every time. 

For all of the wonders of Hyuuga sight, the clan is blind in this regard. Her life is so much more than a ready price to be paid for his own.

“Neji,” she slurs, dazed. “What are you-”

“This is to protect you. It will keep you safe when I cannot.” 

She sighs and goes still. He places his palm over her eyes. 

It is a protection jutsu, in a way. It is the only piece he has left to offer for her continued existence--if she returns home with nothing but bodies, the clan could arrange for her end as recompense. If she walks in with his eyes, they will be forced to reconsider. 

He does not have time to think about how she will have to live the rest of her life in the cage he is vacating.

There is no time. The darkness takes over from the edges of his vision, his sight turning into a tunnel where the ending light is her.

_ I don’t want you to forget me. I want you to live. I wish- _


	10. tenten

She wakes up in a corpse-ridden clearing. There are bodies surrounding her as far as the eye can see, as gruesome as a battlefield. She looks around, scanning the area frantically for signs of Neji and Lee.

She finds their cooling bodies a few hundred meters away. Neji lies face down on the forest floor, and the green of Lee’s jumpsuit is a few more paces away.

Tenten’s eyes burn as she pulls out a scroll, preparing to seal it away so that he can be delivered first to the hospital, then to his clan. She rubs at them, paying little heed to the blood that flakes away on the back of her hands. For shinobi who know the art of sealing, it is standard mission protocol to collect teammates' corpses on missions, to eliminate the need for hunter-nin. She never thought she would need to use this particular seal so early. They were supposed to have more time-

She can’t cry here, not yet. It’s too dangerous--there may be more shinobi coming to clean up the scene and ensure that the three of them were wiped out. There were too many attackers last night for her to be safe yet.

She looks Neji’s body over, checking for weapons that she will keep. One night, when they were chuunin, she had joked that the boys were always her most prized weapons in her arsenal, because she never had to call them back. The best, self-returning teammates who she could always rely on.

Soon there will be nothing left to remember of them but some kunai and weights. She wishes she could travel back to that time and sealed her own mouth.  As if not saying such a cursed phrase would have changed anything here.

As she turns his body and pulls a few senbon out of his jacket collar, his forehead protector slips free, and she notices that the seal is gone. His eyes are open.

They would be a perfectly ordinary shade of brown, if she had not spent the past twenty-three years of her life seeing them in her own reflection.

* * *

_ Neji, what have you done? _


End file.
